My niece is one of those gifted teens. She learns math courses with a week and can remember everything by memory. Almost like she is taking a picture. The girl when talking with her is more mature and intelligent than any adult you will ever meet. Her friends often were college students from science programs. In ninth grade, she took senior classes and tutored the students. She had the highest physics score for the whole school, and she was their youngest student. However, this girl has only had year months of school her entire life. She taught herself everything she knew through constant determination. She is a perfectionist and cares so much about what she does.
However, this girl went under. She can't rememeber anything. She won't leave the house out of fear. She is terribly depressed and angry. All she ever wanted to do is change the world, and now she can barely hold on. I've talked to her, and it seems to link back to her mother, but her mother appears amazingly caring, yet I agree that the mother has some serious issues. I've seen her when she acts like a sleeping idiot.
This is what the girl said.
Apparently, the mother can be emotionally eradict. She calls her names and emotionally abuses. Broke every promise to her. She hasn't seen people, besides her mother, really for three years and spend nearly all her time inside the house alone (this is true). Everytime she did make progress, something happened with the mom. And her pets, which were a huge part in her life (like really big), were taken away from her because the mom felt like it claiming that she did all the work (she didn't, any work she did was because she literally pushed the daughter out of the way to do it. It isn't the kids fault when that happens). During the isolation, the once active and outgoing girl died. She was desperate for something to do, so she started studying birds and collecting them. They were perfectly cared for and paid for by her, but bought on her own. It was just a desperate attempt to improve her reality, she was so desperate for something to do, and the animals sort of helped.
The mom said she could keep them then got rid of them when she wasn't at home for a doctor's appointment, breaking her promise. The girl seemed numbed to it, like she had become used it. One day, a small bird appeared. They had let one of the birds out. The mother screamed her head off for her to let it outside, but she knew she couldn't because it would die a painful, painful death. The species was nonnative. No one would take it and the mother beated her up with words left right and center. She followed her around the house. The girl couldn't hide it.
So, the girl killed it humanely by making then using a gas chamber. I think this really shook her up.
Now, she just seems dead on the inside. But the mother really does care. It is just she honestly doesn't claim to remember any of the things that happen, but the daughter does, yet she can't put it into words. She says that it is like pictures in her brain, and she remembers how they felt. She just can't explain it.
The mother is an airhead. Dumb as a sack of bricks in a way, but doesn't intially act like it. She has so many problems herself, yet she pawns the daughter around. Also, the mother totally believes in auroras, ghost, superstition, religion, etc and it is almost like the only thing she listens too.
Is there any book I can give her or any information about gifted kids? Would this be really damaging to someone like her? The mother makes it look like the daughter is just a bitch that she is desperately trying to save, but I actually talk to her.
I would say counseling, but the girl is afraid that the mother would used this as evidence that she is insane. She constantly tells people that the girl is (in a gossipy tone that acts caring, but kind of rude to say), and this would kind of boost it. The girl is also afraid the counselers would look at her like just some other bad teenager.
